Thursday, June 27, 2013

Hero-cults of the Sun Lord play an
important role in the confusing panorama of religious life of the
Solarity-holding people of Zem (see this post for background). The
cult of Adalfuns the Choate is one such aspect held dear by even the
heretically-minded in the Hill Cantons.

The Chant of Adalfuns the 37th
Aspect of our Sun Lord Puissant

In the Free City (then, as now, a
misnomer) of Aufhebensplota in the August Year of the Noxal Surrender
(or 41,069) was born the hero Adalfuns, the love child of the cow
maiden Welga and our most beloved and virile of divine presences, the
Sun Lord--who is also by way of the shared godhead also Adalfuns.

Though his adolescent years were spent
happily if rowdily knocking the jaunty caps off of local dilettantes
and earning the inexplicable nickname of “Wonder Hans” with the
local maidens, the wanderlust that runs raging in his divine veins
took his course and he struck out from home for the Path of Heroes:
helping other beings in shuffling their mortal coils and the carting
away of their possessions.

So it came to pass that Adalfuns
entered the Hill Cantons in search of the Horned Oracle. Crossing the
River Trvna on the road to Ostrovo he was startled to hear a great
stirring of the water behind. Glancing over his magnificently broad
shoulder he saw the hairy, horned mass of the bukavac hovering
mid-air.

“What ho, bukavac?' Adalfuns cried.
“why do you make ready to leap upon my rippled and ample back?”

“I lack sustenance and wish to dine
upon the delectable substance called man-fat,” answered the bukavac
reasonably.

“Surely my toned and muscular form
would provide poor and gamey fare to your refined, if monstrous
palate.”

“Ah but that is where we differ, oh
man-flesh on the foot,” answered the bukavac, “I have found
delight in the prodigious marbling of a well-seasoned fighting man.”

“I will happily share in my man-fat,
but for a contest of logical conundrums. If you win, you crush
beneath your mass and consume the entirety of my body. If I win, I
shall lop off my right arm and present it to you. In either case your
avaricious belly finds nourishment.”

“While I take exception to the
libelous characterization of my abdomen, I agree to such a contest.”

As Adalfuns began his exposition his
dextrous hands sought out unseen contents from his magic backpack (of
which it is said that the desired item always laid on top).

“Baromil wears a scarlet doublet on
Sunlorday, Jirimil wears a black one on Blackgoatday and Alena wears
a woolen wimple twice a week. Timosz is wearing a burgonet. What day
of the week is it?”

“That make entirely no sense,” said
the bukavac in an exasperated tone. “I shall make ready to leap
upon your ample back.”

“Oh no, wait there is a second part,”
said Adalfuns as he hurriedly and steathily whittled behind his back.
“There is a blood apricot-laden cart leaving Heimotbuch traveling
at four cantonal potato-leagues an hour while another such laden cart
leaves Muth travelling at two leagues per hour. Where and when do the
two carts meet.”

“But again...” Before the
thoroughly confused and enraged bukavac could ready his banter,
Adalfuns took the 10-foot sharpened stick from behind his back and
thrust it into the gleaming red of the great beast.

“Sweet fuck,” said the bukavac in
tremendous pain. “You have blinded and cheated me.”

“But that was exactly my point,”
quipped Adalfuns in a line that sounded good on his tongue at the
time, but on further reflection later seemed cheap and breezy.
Whistling a saucy tune he hitched up his pack and made way to Ostrovo
for a steaming pile of halushky.

A: Chaotic, Good (one of the few
aspects of the Sun Lord so)

B: +1 to hit when using a piercing
weapon (3), +1 to surprise if engaged in conversation with a being
before combat (6).

Monday, June 24, 2013

Rereading this morning the interview I did with David Dunham, the creator of the brilliant King of Dragon Pass(after blogging for five years I find myself
forgetting the details of my own copy), it struck me that one of the
things—besides the charming hand-drawn artwork, deep setting and
challenging game play—that makes the game great and not just merely
good is that it evolved in part out of two creative DIY-tinkering
tabletop campaigns.

If you remember (or if you are just
tuning in) Dunham had played in the 90s in “The Taming of Dragon
Pass”, a tabletop campaign run by Jeff Richards, chief editor of
Glorantha's most recent home Moon Design Publications. That campaign
ran off a home-brewed system called PenDragon Pass, a hack of
Pendragon rpg and Runequest. (You can check out a partial version
here on Dunham's website and a full version in Enclosures #1
if you are lucky bastard)

Mash-up seems inadequate, synthesis is
the better word, as Pendragon Pass takes an unusual campaign premise,
modeling small-scale “domain game” activity centuries before the
usual Glorantha canonical setting, bending the elements of the two
games with a great array of new subsystems and variant rules.

Here is a whole mini-game on cattle
raiding, there an adaption of the Arthurian traits and glory system
to a more organically Gloranthan system. You have the grafting
simplified RQ magic system and the generations-long saga system of
Pendragon noble family life into an Orlanthi clan system.

There's a simplified variant skill
system working off of a d20 with a new skills appropriate to the
colonizing/warring backdrop. The Enclosure version (yes, I know a
lucky bastard) has a tight, interesting character generation system,
an exploration mini-game and a bunch of other lovable chrome.

Fans of the computer game may recall a
scene when some pre-Roman looking Briton types, exotic but still
Orlanthi tribesmen from the distant west, come rolling up in
open-walled chariots. That scene seems to be a bit of an easter egg
homage to an East Ralios campaign by Dunham again using PenDragon Pass
with further customization to fit the particular cultural and
religious features of that other region.

Both accounts fire all my gaming
pistons and strike me as a fully-realized vision of the kind of
backwards engineering that me and my comrades in the DIY wing of the
so-called OSR love to do: take crazy, individualized worldbuilding
visions and bend, break and mutilate all the elements of our favorite
games until they fit. (Sometimes the process works exactly in the
opposite direction, with the mad tinkering informing the shape of the
world, but I think you get my drift.)

That kind of spirit—when it works at
the table—can create a vitality and freshness to the game.
Further having some roots in the open “who knows what's going to
happen” kind of play that is more typical of tabletop than that of
the storyboarding lock-step of most modern crpgs grown purely in
staff meetings.

Or maybe I'm just rationalizing
breaking my self-imposed ban on computer games (again) as I fire up
the PC version for the umpteenth time?

Thursday, June 20, 2013

A couple of weeks ago I had the great
fortune of scoring an affordable copy of a Holy Grail product I have
been patiently searching for a good long while now: Midkemia Press's
Heart of the Sunken Lands.

Though like many so-called Petalheads
(thanks, Scott) I get my rage on for the Tekumel lifting by Raymond
Feist, the setting's popularizer, I have a great love of the actual
gaming products they put out with all their interesting sandbox
subsystems (the encounters and down-time business in Cities in
particular) and eye for nestling those systems in colorful setting
specific ways.

With Rudy Kraft--co-designer of the gold standard for wilderness sandboxes, Griffin
Mountain—listed as the author of Sunken Lands I figured it had to
be a solid piece of work.

I wasn't disappointed.

The book lays out (with a nifty
four-panel blank players' map) a first-class wilderness sandbox set
in a large, mountain-ringed, jungle-choked depression. The product
has a lot of depth with many pages being devoted to
navigation/exploration of the unique range of terrains; inventive,
non-standard creatures, plants, gems, extractable resources, and
humanoids; an expeditions table (lifted from my favorite section of
their Jonril books) that hardwires in an interesting range of
incentives for player exploration; and a couple mysterious sites.

With my eponymous campaign now shifting
for the moment to the exploration, clearing and possible colonization
of a wilderness region called the Feral Shore (more about that later)
what I found most intriguing were the subsystems for wilderness
exploration (apparently planned for a never-published Midkemia
wilderness supplement). I found them highly inspirational and
instantly set down to custom fit them to the new mini-campaign.

What the Feral Shore looked like 500 years ago
before being wiped out of existence by the Turko-Fey

The outline of that system (redacted to
not tip off the players over much) I share below.

Feral Shore Exploration and
Movement

What's different from the typical D&D
systems:

Movement is calculated by the hour
instead of by the day.

Encounter checks are done by the
hex rather than by time.

Encounters cover a wider range of
events than the typical wandering monster-like check. Interesting
plants, mineral deposits, geographical features, run-in's with
sentient beings, strange sites etc are included on tables specific
to the terrain of the hex.

Checks are also made on a Mishap
table per hex (includes such things as getting lost, having a horse
go lame, equipment break, inclement weather, etc.)

Speed matters. A party moving at a
slower speed will have an increased chance of hitting an encounter
but a decreased chance of having a mishap.

Movement Speeds

Exploration 6
average hours/day

Cautious, Encumbered or Party over
50 8 average hours/day.

Normal 10 average hours/day.

Traveling Light or Forced March 12
average hours/day.

Assumption for Normal travel

Foot: STR 8-14 character can hump 25-40 lbs of
gear in pack and pouches, armor of chain/half-plate or less, two
weapons, shield. Weaker character -10 lbs, Stronger character +10 lbs

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

One of those “how did I
get this far into the party with spinach stuck in my teeth with no
one telling me” moments. The full-color Bilibin cover for By This Axe that I had intended for both the print and PDF versions
hasn't been showing up in merged in the PDF version (though it does
appear on my publisher preview).

Since it was my intention
to provide said cover, if you have purchased a copy of the PDF before
today (the new revised version online now should have a cover merged
in) drop me an email at kutalik at
the gmail dot com with your Lulu receipt (you can excise info
if that doesn't make you comfortable) and I will send you a copy of
the new file AND automatically email you a copy of the two free
supplements when they come out.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

One for the “showing my work” file, some of the
inspiration points that went into the religion and cosmology series.
Another post on the terrifying inimical gods of the Anti-Cantons may
be in the making.

Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword and
Three Hearts and Three Lions, Douglas Bachmann's Dragon article in #40 (the Weird and its cosmic juxtaposition to human civilization, the
association of humanity with Law, the waxing/waning of gods being
tied to the amount of human worship and the reduction of “Faerie”)

Monday, June 17, 2013

Continuing this series on the religion
in the campaign. Parts one and two here and here.

Godlings

Gaxx the Jerk-King sets forth in his time-misted Annals of theFive-Fold Path that “puissant and sage paragons who follow
alignment to the absolute letter of its definition must eventually
move off into another plane of existence.” Such must be the case
as despite humanity's seemingly inexorable march toward monotheism a
bewildering number of godlings on the rise have joined the ranks of demi-gods, fallen gods, and nature spirits that densely pack most
corners of the Weird with their Immanence.

Kostej the Deathless

The Ursine Master

The Mistress of the Mountains

Svatek the Guardian

The Horned Oracle

Moon Calf

Vul the Drowned

Ježibaba the Witch-Bitch

Firuabakir

Water, Wood, and Hill Spirit-Gods

The Half-Gods of Marlankh

Civic Gods

Atrophied Gods

Even beings as powerful as gods face
inevitably sunset. Without the power of veneration they coast on for
years living on past glories, perhaps regaining a spring in their
step here and there when fashions revive a pocket of faddish worship.

Many of the Old Pahr deities, like
those of the Kaftors and Boreans before them, have faded to shadows.
Who knows—indeed, cares--these days of the cosmic wrestling between
Chernobog and his brother Bilibog? Or the Cattle Raids of Velesh? The
aching pain of the Great Stonefisting? All-powerful world-shattering
gods slowly become autumnal backhills gods and then--before the
longer midnight of sleep claims them--they finally slump into mere
godlings.

Marzana

A few able-toed fallen deities manage
to adapt to their downshift, sometimes recasting themselves with
entirely different briefs and personas as they adapt to their new
station. Marzana, the old Pahr goddess now coasting a head above
local godling status, is widely suspected to be Mara, a chthonic
goddess of legendary emotional iciness. It is said that after running
hot for a while with the jet-set gods of the Latter Hyperborean
successor states as a trendy “goddess of bittersweet remembrances,
poised languidness, and doleful fashion” that she had a tremendous
row with a divine lover and in that baleful fallout covered the world
in ice.

Like Radegast she ekes out a life
mainly as a Hill Cantons folk festival patroness (and tiny pockets of
worship) where a rag-filled, garlic-bedecked straw effigy of her is
dragged through the streets toward the local water source while being
dipped into every puddle, pond and mud mire along the way. At water
edge the effigy is burned and a nearby tree festooned with gaudy
baubles. Druids (either real if a pagan community or symbolically
draped with granola if a Sun Lord-fearing community) march behind the
procession chanting “it's not much, but it's a life.”

A: Neutral

B: Ice Arrow (3), Reincarnation (11)

C: Female druids, magic users

D: Winter, Dead and Rebirth, Emotional
Distance

The Silent God

Rumored to be the Father of the Sun
Lord, though the increasing tight-lippedness of his dwindling
congregants makes the true nature of this god and his doctrine a
head-scratcher for most. His symbol is nine-pointed star. Complicated
esoteric equations and schematics are often associated with savants
that follow him.

A: Lawful (Good? Evil?)

B: Confusion (5)

C: Any but must be born into the faith

D: Inscrutability, Stoic Continuity,
Guiltmongering

Click to enlarge

The World Turtle

Jarek the Nagsman, Marlank bon vivant
and sage, maintains that the World Turtle that the Hill Cantons rests
on swims through time in a series of dialectical mini and macro
cycles upwards to the End of History. The other planes, he
contends, may be the antithesis or synthesis of the present of the
HC--but of course that's absurd heresy.﻿

At High Summer, the shortest night of
the year, Altnoc, is celebrated by placing a turtle shell (for
the WT naturally) inside a wagon wheel and rolling into an enormous
bonfire while celebrants plait wreaths of nightshade and jump across
the blazing logs in defiance of the demons who dwell Beyond the Veil.

Perhaps troubling for the continuing
existence of the world, very few actually worship the World Turtle
anymore.

Hyperborean “Space Gods”

The Late Classical Hyperborean period
suffered from a surfeit of power-intoxication best personified by the
wicked, vying Necromancers' pursuit of divine transformation. Lying
in state in the Cerulean Vaults far below the surface streets of
Kezmarok they spend millenia pondering dream logic and building up
the will to metaphorize into beings of pure energy. Small cults
nestled in the Undercity continue service and worship of them.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Following
up from the last post on religion and the HC campaign, the remaining two “outcast” deities of Solarism and the pagan old gods of the Pahr. The last post will
finish the series up with the myriad godlings and inimical gods (and
an “Appendix N” of all the various half-baked sources in the
cosmology mix).

Habeka
the Celestial Lady

A
spurned and feisty female deity (also called the Lady, She Who We
Shall Not Mention, or the Triple-Goddess) whose now-heretical
followers seek to restore her place in the Divine Family. While her
relative divine status is disputed, her location and lack of mobility
is not: she is currently chained to the Great Hearth constellation—a
situation she and her followers greatly resent, naturally. Men of
learning attribute the nourishing twice annual Blood Rains to the
Lady's periodic revenge beatings of the Sun Lord with her star-forged
silver chains.

Her
followers are divided among three bickering secret societies: the
Evening Star, the Morning Star, and the Starry Void lodges. The first
two societies are mostly moderate and socially egalitarian factions
with a strong base artisans and denizens of the Borderlands. The
Starry Void is a zealous, secretive, and lotus-addled crew who are
rumored to dabble with the Mysteries of the Outer Void.

C:
All classes but Clerics and Druids. Magic users, Monks and Assassins
only for the Starry Void.

D:
Co-Ruler of All Creation, Mystery, Motherhood

William Blake's The Night of Enitharmon's Joy (often called Hecate)

The
Antagonist, The Fallen Demiurge, Ha-Vul

A
third malicious yet lawful entity, carefully never called directly by
its true name, is often attributed to the Solarist religious
grouping. Some in the borderlands believe that the god has no real
substance and is merely a folk legend maintained by the Sun Lord's
spiritual lords to scare some moral purity into the dullard minds of
Corelands folk. Others say that this entity is the collective spirit
of that fell domain known as the Anti-Cantons and a brave few
maintain that he may even be a wayward, malicious aspect of the Sun
Lord himself.

A:
Lawful Evil only

B:
reversed spells only. Cause Light Wounds (2)

C:
(Anti) Clerics

D:
Rigidity, Corruption, Being a Dick

Pahr
“Old Gods”

The
gods worshiped by the Pahr people of the Overkingdom and Kezmarok
before their conversion.

Svat
the Four-Faced

Distant, vaguely warm Father Figure god, head of the Pahr Pantheon but greatly diminished in power to the point of his fading from existence outside of the four-faced wooden pillar shrines. It's unclear what we does all day and when he gets home he sits by the fire, smiling distractedly.
A:
Chaotic Good in some aspects, Neutral in others.

B:
Pass Without Trace (2)

C:
Druids, Fighters

D:
Formerly all things. Unclear what current domain is other than his
veneration by the unemployed and harassed Pahr fathers.

Radegast

Old Pahr name Radhošt. He is still widely revered during harvest rituals throughout the cantons as a folklore symbol even by Sun Lord worshipers.A:
Chaotic Good

B:
Resist Drink (1), can voluntarily elect to drink three times as much
as normal without becoming inebriated. Friends (2). Cheat Fate (5):
Reroll a single die roll. Otto's Irresistible Dance (15)

Reputed by certain esoteric orders to be merely the half-human offspring of one of Radegast's many dalliances with the female half of humankind, he is undoubtedly the most beloved of the Lord of Hosts' children and his cult flourishes to this day in the backhills of the borderlands. His followers' abodes are instantly recognizable by the littering of children's toys, many teeth-marked, throughout their living space. Not one for subtle interventions Storm-Child demands the attention of mortals he encounter. Many of the “touched” ruffians, mountebanks and picaros that style themselves “adventurers” spread too-consistent tales of hearing the godling's howls carried by a far wind while deep in the Weird.
A:
Chaotic Good

Friday, June 14, 2013

I continue to plug away at Live Weird
or Die, the obsessive compilation of house rules, variant classes,
and Hill Cantons setting whoha. As the project grows it becomes
unclear who I am actually writing for. The players? A broader
audience? Or just myself?

At any rate I find it a pleasureable
place to go in my mind when work gets overwhelming and it's helped
fill in the holes during play so I take it as a good place to
“procrastitask”. And because the players have been recently eager as
of late to suss out the various big-ticket cosmic mysteries in the
campaign, I have been pounding the keys on the religion chapter.

Below is part one of that chapter,
headed up by the simple system I am using to spit out the necessary
D&D mechanical information. You will note my moving away from
Clerics as a universal class for deities and one specifically tied to
the ostensibly monotheistic dominant religion detailed here.

The first painting from Mucha's Slavonic cycle

Sect Characteristics

Attributed Alignment (A): the
hyper-powerful beings called gods exist beyond the human-derived
theoretical framework called alignment. In fact, many stories of the
antics of the gods clearly show them acting in ways inconsistent with
alignment behavior and it's not an infrequent occurrence for many of
the most powerful gods to have distinct aspects, manifestations, or
incarnations that act wholly in a different alignment mode (though
never in the one directly in opposition). Of course, that doesn't
stop humans from attributing a single, approximate alignment to the
deity and an aspirational doctrine for followers.

Bonus Spells/Powers (B): Special bonus
spells and powers granted to faithful clergy or other temporal agents
beyond their normal spell range. The number in parenthesis represents
what level the power is granted. All powers are useable once a day
unless otherwise specified.

Priesthood Class (C): Clerics are only
found in the ranks of the most supreme of all humanity's gods, the
Sun Lord. All other clergy are vocational posts (with special
powers/spells) eligible to certain classes as per their deity.

Domain (D): What humans consider the
deity's area of control. Again the actual deity may consider his or
her's brief to be something wider and may share or battle another
power for jurisdiction.

Solarist Sects

Most of humanity in Zěm (the world
that the Hill Cantons reside in) lives nominally under a single, yet
highly fractious and localized religion called Solarism. As the
centuries have rolled on this body of religious doctrine has been
thought by sheltered Coreland practitioners to be the single
“theologically correct” world view ruled (or at least dominated)
by a single godhead, the Sun Lord. Though open to fierce debate two
other “entities” the Celestial Lady and the Antagonist are
recognized--to varying degrees--as part of the religious umbrella.

Paradoxically the more monolithic
Solinaity has grown the more hyper-nuanced, locally-differentiated,
contradictory, contested and absurd it's actual real world practice
has become.

A: Lawful Good (with odd, rare Chaotic
Good and Lawful Evil aspects)

B: by sect below

C: Clerics only

D: By doctrine all things human, but
Illumination, Glory, Warmth, Sustaining the World, Heroic Activity,
All Things Related to the Sky and the Sun,.

It is known that in the post-Hyborean
period that the Sun Lord roamed the world conducting great feats.
Achingly similar stories of his virile prowess and —the
bullwhipping of the Unachus, the jilting of the White Goddess,
etc--are told throughout the known world. One school of contemporary
thought maintains that the Sun Lord was merely a mighty folk hero, a
fleshy mortal sac like you and I, another that the many and diverse
manifestations are the work of many separate local heroes. The more
orthodox hold that he was an existent god, who manifested himself
everywhere as hero and concealed his divinity as a test of humanity's
worth.

The Sun Lord (his true name is banned
from mention) drives the Chariot of the Heavens along the
wheel-rutted troughs of the Dome of the Cosmos daily. The god spends
the winter months dining with the ancient divine “space god”
luminaries of Hyperborea. Some savants believe that the god is
in reality a godhead of 313 “Rays” and that many old gods have
been said to be usurped, absorbed or even eaten this way.

The faith is currently divided into 31
Houses of Orthodoxy over seemingly absurd doctrinal differences
(whether sign of the sun is clockwise or counter, how many fingers
used, the number of wheels on the Sun Chariot, etc.)

The Sun Lord grants special favor to
his servants that walk the path of prim and orderly weal (LG), they
gain access to the full range of spells and bonus powers. Clerics
that have lapsed into Chaotic Good can use the full range of spells
but not the bonus ones, while those who have decadently slipped into
Neutral (a sad majority of this class, really) are limited to the
first 3 levels of spells. Perversely Lawful Evil clerics gain access
to all levels of only the reversible spells—though clearly they
gain such nefarious power from secret affiliation with the powers of
the Anti-Cantons or Ha-Vul the Antagonist (see Part 2). Chaotic Evil
clerics do not exist.

Supernal Orthodox Temple of the
Puissant Sun Lord

The official religion of the
Overkingdom with an established and widespread hierarchy through most
of human civilization. Projecting itself as a monotheistic (if
syncretistic) religion, the Temple ostensibly dominates the
Overkingdom spiritually. The Temple itself holds a tight monopoly on
the manufacture and distribution of the Seed of the Sun (gunpowder),
which does not work in the Weird.

A: as above

B: Light (1), Continual Light (4),
Disputation (6): priest lays down such a mighty and byzantine line of
theological polemic that the listener must save as vs. a Confusion
spell, only usable on humans who understand Vulgar Hyperborean (the
common tongue of the realm)

C: Clerics

D: as above

The Ultra-Orthodox Patriarchate

The official religion of Kezmarok with
the Patriarch as its supreme spiritual head. Though astoundingly
rigid in its doctrine and intolerance of other sects of the
Solianity, they are shockingly tolerant of other “apostate”
religions to the point of allowing their open (if regulated and
taxed) worship.

A: as above

B: Smell Heresy (2): priest can smell
out in a 20-foot radius followers of other houses, Continual Light
(4), Disputation (6) as above.

C: Clerics

D: as above

Minor Houses

The Thousand-Faced Myrmidons

A martial order of clerics and
lay-brothers who emphasize and centralize the hero-cult
manifestations of the Sun Lord.

Brothers of the Other Mother

Orthodox monastic order that promotes
the veneration of a less divine “Marian” like mother-figure to
the Celestial Lady.

Followers of the Cleansing Rays

An ascetic order of ultra-orthodox
followers that believe one must drop away all care of the material
world and devote yourself to full-time basking in the rays of the sun
and other devotional acts.

Brethren of the Supernal Skies

A mystical and martial order of monks
devoted to a heretical reconciliation—cosmic “remarriage”--of
the Sun Lord with the Celestial Lady. Nominally at war with the Other
Mother cult.

The Quadraligists

An orthodox sect that dogmatically
maintains that the Sun Lord's chariot has four wheels and four wheels
only. In mutual and heated conflict with the Two-Wheeled School of
Immanence and the Troikaites (who go as far as to say at times that
the chariot could be in fact a sled).

The Fustians

It's unclear what they actually believe
other than a highly contrarian worldview that involves the shouting
down of opponents.

Primitive-Reconstructionists,
Heimtbach Conclave

Orthodox sect that maintains that the Sun
Lord has a single aspect to be venerated among all others. There is
internal confusion however on what that aspect is, paralyzing their spread.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Last week I promised that I would be
releasing both a Skirmish and Campaign supplements as free PDFs for
folks picking up copies of my mass battle rules By This Axe.
The good news is that that work is steadily on track. A working draft
of the skirmish rules are reasonably complete and poised for
playtesting.

Basically I have taken the mini-game
that handles duels in the larger battle system between strutting
champions and extrapolated a dice-pool melee system that allows you
to make individual tactical choices for warriors each combat turn.
The scale is downshifted from the 1:5 and 1:20 system of the battle
rules to a 1:1, unitless scale (though complemented by a simple
command and control system). They seem to work reasonably well in my
solo-testing for forces of 5-25 figures a side, but you know we will
see as we get further in.

Anywho if you have picked up a copy of
BTA (the draft rules will make very little sense if you don't have a
copy) and are interested in playtesting or just giving me feedback
drop me a line at kutalik at the gmail dot com and I will pleased as
the proverbial punch to send you a copy of the draft.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Sales of By This Axe broke 100
yesterday (overwhelmingly the PDF) for which I am greatly
appreciative of. Yay supporting advocacy work for autistic children.

One thing I wanted to flag the
attention of for the folks who have ponied up their hard-earned dosh
for BTA, I have plans for releasing not just the one campaign
supplement that I promised earlier but two.

The campaign supplement will roll out
as planned hitting the points I teased a few days ago (and adding a few more about tips on how to integrate the system with an ongoing rpg campaign) . Kicked in the
butt by a new design inspiration flurry, I will also be releasing in the next couple weeks a free skirmish rules set (and yes, an errata) that
extrapolates the duel “dice pool” mini-game in BTA into a more
detailed one-on-one combat system.

Best of all to the frugal wargamer both
supplements will be available for the “right price”, free, for
all people who purchased either the PDF or print copies of BTA. Yay
cheap asses.

Saturday, June 1, 2013

By his axe, the Decade King doth rule again
on the occupied Kezmaroki island of Jorfyrr.

Mercenary forces retained by the Decade
King have routed the army of Lykutaa the Cackling Satrap in a battle
this morning on the isle. Veteran mercenary captain Mahk “the
Knife” leading a mixed company of knight-exiles, black hobbit
infantry, gladiators and cantonal bowmen shocked the Southlands with
his surprise landing yesterday. Swiftly leading his forces inland he
was met by the quick muster—and sorcerous summonings—of the
demi-lich tyrant that usurped power so many long centuries ago.

For two grinding hours the two armies
were locked in a see-saw battle. An artist's recreation with cast
metal figures follows below.

Satrap phalanx works up a battle frenzy.

Melee in the center.

Knight-exiles lock swords with the giant lizards.

Cantonal bowmen decimated by Cloudkill.

Vexor the Underwhelming vanquished in a duel with Mahk.

And now the rout begins in earnest. A highly perturbed demi-lich tyrant tries vainly to rally his center.